What's the Dumbest Thing You Ever Did to a Coin

Just the 1916-D!

 

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I won't go into gory detail but suffice it to say that thin medieval silver coins are no match for an office paper shredder...

 

I cant honestly say I've done anything stupid with coins.
Hmmm, could be selective memory kicking in.

 

My worst was to crack a bunch of slabs to put in Dansco albums. Didn't even think that someday I would need to bust the coins out of the albums to sell. Big waste of money.

My second worst was not buying all the nice Bust coins possible, 40 years ago.

My third was not buying the Matte proof 1909 VDB cent many years ago. Today it's more than I care to spend.

 

First off I'm claiming the "I was a little kid" defense because it's true.

When I was 6 I wanted the coin collector kit from the old Sears Wish Book for Christmas. Santa came through.
Little did my parents know my "phase" would never end.

In this kit came a nice polish for cleaning your coins. I used it. On an 1851 large cent. Hey I was just a little kid.

Some 50+ years later I still have that coin. It looks great if it were a piece of fresh salmon that is. Not so great for a 170 year old copper coin.

Now the WORST thing I ever did to a coin I did with full knowledge of the harmful effects.
It was when I worked at the coin shop. We bought a smattering of coins from some guy including some Morgans.
One was heavily encrusted with some green stuff. Couldn't even see the date but could make out the CC on the reverse.

I started off easy. An acetone soak which did nothing. My methods became more and more radical until it came to (GASP!) a brillo pad.

I finally revealed the date. Don't remember what it was but it was common as CCs go.

We sold it on ebay with a large picture and description of the sheer hell I had put that coin through. Got about $60 for it too.

 

The good news is this isn't about a collectable coin.

In mid 1982, the copper plated zinc cents were starting to show up in change. I had read that zinc had a low melting point and thought I would do some metallurgical experiments. I turned on the bass burner if the stove, held the coin with a pair of pliers, and held it in the flame.

I can confirm that a gas stove is hot enough to melt zinc. I can also confirm that the zinc can be removed from the porcelain enamel stove top with only a little noticeable damage/discoloration. Glad Mom never found out.

 

My stupid move was also attributable to being young and dumb. My grandmother, who started me on coin collecting, gave me a roll of IHC's. Remember now, I was 9 y/o and this was back in 1968. Long before the information age of the www.

My grandmother had a small container of copper cleaner/polish. I did the dastardly deed of taking a cloth with polish and cleaned one of the IHC. It looked good to these 9 y/o eyes. So I figured if a little cleaning was good then a lot of cleaning would be better. This dumbo took the entire roll of cents and just lined them up and stuck them into the tub of polish, left them in it overnight, and removed the pitted hunks of remaining copper the next day

Not one date on any coin was legible. Not one Indian profile was visible. Every single coin was ruined forevermore.

For the record, it didn't take a future 'movement' on the part of numismatists to shun the act of cleaning coins for me to know what I did was reprehensible. I still shudder when I think back to that 24 hour period. I've never cleaned another coin since that cringe worthy day.

 

I can also confirm that a quarter will completely melt at 2850 degrees F.

It wasn't my dumb mistake, but when I worked for a company that made wear resistant aluminum oxide ceramics, one of my operators called me to evaluate some stained and cracked parts that just came out of the kiln. The part that had the heaviest damage had a visible void. When I broke it apart, there was a partial imprint of the obverse of a Washington quarter as well as some reeding.

The parts are made by hydraulically pressing the powder, then firing in a kiln. Somehow a quarter got into the powder hopper and was pressed inside the part. When it was fired to 2850F, the quarter completely melted and the metal flowed into the surrounding parts and kiln shelf causing cracking and large black stained area (probably forming a copper aluminate and other stuff).

Never did find out if it was an accident or intentional, but we made a big deal about the investigation to make sure nobody decided it would be fun to try again .

 

Cool!

Or should I say hot?

 

Dumbest thing I ever did to a coin was trying to be slick as a kid to hide it. Figured I'd remove the light switch plate and there's a little pocket on each side of the switch so I figured I'd tuck my 1900 P morgan dollar my father gave me in there for safe keeping.

Well. it made contact with the two side terminals on the switch as only a dumb kid wouldn't realize was gonna happen, it gave me a heck of a zap and tripped the breaker to half the house, and left two melted spots where the side terminals made contact on the face of the coin. Dad wasn't mad about the coin, he was pretty furious about the power getting knocked out though. could have went a whole lot worse I suppose. LOL

 

Hopefully there wasn't an 1877 or 1909-S.

 

Me too. However, I didn't know then. I don't know now. And I'll never know going forward. So my angst from my idiotic maneuver is forever ingrained in my long term storage bank.

 

I been filling holes in a Dansco. I cannot bring myself to break a coin out of a slab. It feels to me that I am scratching the paint on a new car…… I have purchased several coins lately for my Dansco and told the seller that my purchase was based upon them breaking the coin free from the slab for me. Not necessarily a bad thing to do to a coin but it feels pretty darned silly to me!

 

My concern with your strategy is the fear that the seller will not break it free with the same TLC you would.

 

In the early 1960's I took a US dime and placed it between pieces of leather and started hammering.

The dime grew from it's normal 18 mm size to 22 mm.


Large dime and regular dime

Needless to say I kept it as it was impossible to spend.

 

No explanation required:



It is nice and shiny with the car wax on it though!

 

I took an 1881 Haiti One Gourde that my grandparents had given me, and went to town with the silver polish, just to try to shine it up. I kick myself every time I look at it now. It's still a nice coin with great detail but polished. I thought of adding it to my pocket pieces several years ago to try to unpolish it but didn't want to risk loosing it.

 

Oh man… I can’t say anything. I also have a thing for old guitars. One of my prize guitars is a very old Gibson. Four years ago I completely disassembled the old guitar and rebuilt it to new spec condition. It looked like it was fresh from the factory…… I put a heavy coat of Johnson’s paste wax on it and closed up the case where it stayed until last year. I opened it to find the heavy coat of paste wax had become what looked like a dried desert floor on the body of that old guitar….. I am no longer a proponent of Johnson’s paste wax!

 

I still can’t believe that Mercury walked all the way and rested on the railroad’s track. To bad you didn’t get there in time to save it. So sad

 

Dumbest thing? Trying to remove a coin from a 2x2 and scratching it with the staples......